Attention danger ! Cultural and creative industries are threatened by artificial intelligence! For several weeks, appeals, particularly in the form of statements in the press, have been made to political leaders. In vain. They did not arouse the slightest reaction from anyone, nor the opening of the slightest debate on the subject.
This is how a professional association, and the unions of actors mobilized and united, in order to move up a gear. They wrote a joint letter, in the form of an open letter, which they sent on Friday to the heads of the ministries concerned – Culture, the Economy and the Digital Transition, as well as to the Presidents of committees at the National Assembly and the Senate. .
They ask to meet them as soon as possible, in order to consider, with them, the measures to be taken urgently in the face of a legal and legislative void in the field of regulation. They have indeed found that at the time of the development of ChatGPT, Mid Journey, or any other form of artificial intelligence, the laws on the protection of intellectual property are absolutely not respected. They have the feeling of being in the middle of the Far West, surrounded by funny guns.
Recognizing the potential of this technology in the fields of care, health, security and the fight against fraud, they are concerned, on the other hand, about the evolution of algorithms, now likely to be able to produce, generate, manipulate or synthesize, from authentic elements, sounds, images, and “plausibly human” voices. For them, the danger is clear: any form of drift in this area is likely to lead to economic and societal upheavals, starting with the eventual disappearance of dubbing, voice-over, translation and subtitling, in the fields of cinema, television, advertising and audio books.
A general regulation on data protection, called GDPR, was voted by the European Parliament in 2016, but it does not solve all the problems, far from it. Offenders currently take the risk of being condemned by the CNIL to pay a fine of up to 4% of their turnover.
In the letter they sent, there are avenues likely to advance the thinking of our rulers. The proposed measures were not determined at random. They are based on those being taken in other countries, starting with the United States.
The first demand of the authors of this open letter is a commitment by decision-makers to establish a clear and precise legal framework, following consultation with a few key players in this cultural universe. They also ask for the establishment of quotas, like those that exist today for French song. The part of human intervention in a film, an audio book, an advertisement or a dubbing will have to be imposed and respected by the producers.
Measures must also be taken so that voice data on the Internet is not used without the green light of the person who originated it. Today, you can only express your refusal, which is not quite the same thing.
Finally, still on the web, they suggest that audio messages warn the consumer that the voice they are about to hear has been generated by an artificial intelligence. “We are ready to work with the public authorities, say Patrick Kuban and Stephan Kalb, members of the association “Lesvoix.fr”. It is out of the question that the pages read by the actors will one day be replaced by a single line, exclusively composed of computer codes”.
